With a 1.3-inch OLED touchscreen, don’t expect to tap out a full-fledged tweet or status update from the new Sony gizmo — even in morse code. But with the SmartWatch, you should be able to peruse your latest inbox arrival, check the rain forecast, and even preview who’s calling the smartphone that’s buzzing in your pocket — provided that phone runs on Google’s Android operating system, and is synced to the watch via Bluetooth.

And if you have a Bluetooth headset, you can use the SmartWatch to remotely answer your phone, and quickly begin talking. How well does it work? We won’t know until we get a review unit, and put the watch through its paces. But like the Pebble smartwatch we reported on Thursday, we eagerly await quality time with the new Sony device.

The SmartWatch just hit Sony’s retail stores on Thursday at a price of $150, with interchangeable wristbands in white, blue, grey, green and pink at $20 a pop. Other retailers will start selling the SmartWatch soon, says Sony.

Sony’s new timepiece will be competing for space on your wrist with a number of other gadgets: Motorola’s Motoactv, Apple’s iPod Nano and rival smartwatches such as the Pepple and the Wimm One.

Are consumers really interested in these products? It’s still an open question. Sony has been trying to break this space open for the last couple years, most recently with the Sony Ericsson LiveView Phone Remote watch, which ran many similar apps and also used Bluetooth to pull info from Android phones.

But, hey, if nothing else, the name Sony SmartWatch is a much easier to say than Sony Ericsson LiveLive Phone Remote.